Different types of career mobility: Vertical, lateral, & hybrid paths to opportunity

Career mobility is more than just "moving up".

Calling all equity-driven people leaders: Are you familiar with the different types of career mobility?

It's time we better understand the different shapes internal (and external) mobility can take, so we can equip our workers – and businesses – for the future of work.

In this guide, we’ll cover:

→ Why career mobility is more than just “moving up”
→ The different types of career mobility and their benefits
→ Employers strategies to facilitate vertical, lateral, and hybrid career mobility

Table of contents

• Chapter 1: Addressing common misconceptions: Career mobility means more than just moving “up”

• Chapter 2: Defining vertical career mobility: What is it and how can employers promote it?

• Chapter 3: Defining lateral career mobility: The secret weapon for building internal talent pipelines

• Chapter 4: Defining hybrid career mobility: When vertical and lateral paths combine

• Chapter 5: Overcoming challenges to career mobility

• Chapter 6: Best practices for nurturing career mobility from the Fortune 1000

Career mobility means more than moving “up.”

It’s impossible to put too fine a point on the importance of career mobility for today’s workforce.

As business changes and new technologies emerge, new opportunities are created — and employees across job levels are feeling a sense of urgency to grow their skills and their careers.

Typically, when people think of career mobility, they think of either:

• A promotion or

• Job movement into a role that has higher potential for upward mobility

At its heart, though, the definition of career mobility is the ease and agility with which an employee can move into a better opportunity for them as an individual.

The definition of career mobility is the ease & agility with which an employee can move into a better opportunity for them as an individual.

That often means a promotion, but it can also mean a lateral move into a role or department better aligned with an employee’s talents, goals, and interests.

It can also mean dialing back to a role better aligned with personal needs and priorities that may conflict with full-time work or high-intensity work.

In short, a better definition of mobility is a job movement into a better opportunity.

We can think of career mobility as having three distinct types of pathways:

• Vertical: Promotions within a specific department or job family (e.g. sales manager to sales director)

• Lateral: Movement into new roles at a comparable job level or pay grade (e.g. marketing associate to sales associate)

• Hybrid: A combination of vertical and lateral movement (e.g. cashier to department manager to HR specialist)

Understanding these types of career mobility can help facilitate career planning, upskilling, and advancement.

How does career mobility benefit companies?

It ensures that corporate structures have the right on-ramps into roles necessary to keep a workforce agile to shifting needs.

It also ensures that a company can retain and attract talent through demonstrating a strong ability and commitment to add value to its employees’ lives and careers.

What is vertical career mobility?

Vertical career mobility is the upward progression through a corporate hierarchy, typically in one’s field. This is most commonly achieved through promotions within the organization, as well as assuming higher levels of responsibility.

For career-oriented employees, vertical career mobility is a primary goal.

Upward job mobility often comes with:

• Upward economic mobility

• The ability to pursue and hold positions of leadership

• The opportunity to grow expertise

• And a chance to advance in the field

Why should employers care about vertical career mobility?

For employers, vertical career mobility is an opportunity to retain, reward, invest in, and continue to benefit from top talent.

But for many employees, access to this type of career mobility is hard won — and in some cases altogether inaccessible.

Employers that invest in onramps and reskilling and upskilling accessible to their entire workforces tend to see significantly higher retention rates among employees who aspire to achieve career mobility.

For example, employees enrolled in upskilling programs through Guild’s Learning Marketplace were 2.1x less likely to leave their employer in the last 12 months relative to non-engaged employees.1

3 strategies for helping employees achieve vertical career mobility

There are a number of strategies you can employ to help your employees achieve vertical career mobility.

However, it’s essential that you complement these strategies with the right career mobility infrastructure.

1. Train managers to help employees set clear career goals and objectives

In our recent article on the "owning your own development" fallacy, we talk about the crucial need for employers to recognize that their employees kick off the career race from diverse starting lines.

Why does this matter?

Because it means employees must receive the right support – whether technical, emotional, or otherwise – to ensure everyone can achieve career mobility.

Although determining the right career path and end goals are specific to each person, this is not something your employees should have to undertake in a silo.

Instead, managers should take the time to:

• Understand their direct reports

• Discuss their career aspirations and interests with them

• And partner with them in developing a growth plan

Growth and career coaching are invaluable to this process.

The key to goal setting is ensuring a growth plan is actionable. Often, this starts with:

• Identifying skills gaps between their current role and future role

• Discussing the best way to gain those new skills (e.g. a stretch project, bachelor’s degree, short-form certificate, etc.)

• Helping employees take the next step (e.g. find a mentor, sign up for a course, etc.)

2. Offer employees opportunities to acquire relevant skills and experience

Once skills gaps in the way of vertical mobility are identified, now comes the task of determining how to gain them.

Employers can offer education benefits to accelerate career mobility.

But with thousands of credentials to choose from, just offering tuition reimbursement is not a reliable way to make sure your employees are gaining the skills and expertise they need to advance.

Instead, try leveraging a career mobility platform that offers:

• Quality programs: A marketplace of curated learning programs from credible institutions to improve outcomes

• Limited/no out-of-pocket costs: Fully-funded coursework to boost engagement

• Flexible options: Flexible course offerings (e.g. self-paced, rolling enrollment) to improve the diversity of your career mobility pool

Experience counts for a lot here, too. Make sure your employees have opportunities to complete “stretch” projects internally to demonstrate their ability to operate at the next job level.

3. Provide ample mentorship and networking opportunities

Thoughtfully-designed mentorship opportunities are a must for career mobility.

Employers should provide spaces where employees can find community within the organization, such as:

• Employee resource groups

• Formal mentorship programs

• Networking events

Through mentorship, individuals connect with willing mentors who can share insights and wisdom from their experiences — and potentially help advocate for growth opportunities for their mentees.

This is a strong way to help employees build networking skills while learning about navigating their own career pathways within the organization.

Podcast plug: Hear more about the power of mentorship from ex-Amex CEO Ken Chenault in our recent Opportunity Divide podcast.

“I think it’s important for mentees to recognize “what are you doing in a very tangible way to grow as a person?”. It's not that someone is immediately going to do great things, but what you will see are changes in people's behavior, which is the leading indicator that they will do great things…. What to me is most important is the willingness of the person to understand how they are perceived by other people, as well as to understand that there are areas in their leadership behavior that they need to improve.”

Ken Chenault, ex Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of American Express on two-way mentorship

What is lateral career mobility?

Lateral career mobility is the job movement from one department or field to another without a significant change in the level of responsibility between the prior role and the new role.

Why would employees seek lateral career mobility?

The motivation for lateral career mobility is often strategic.

Employees recognize that moving into a new department or role may result in better opportunities to progress in an area better aligned with their interests.

For example, a sales associate who wishes to pursue a career in marketing may make a lateral move into a marketing associate role.

Employers can use lateral mobility to grow internal talent pipelines.

But wait, there’s more.

In addition to helping employees take a step toward achieving their own personal career goals, lateral mobility is a critical talent tool for employers.

When employers use effective career mobility programs, companies can:

• Promote and market open roles in growing departments, like supply chain, dev ops, marketing, and more

• Create targeted reskilling pathways to move employees laterally into “gateway roles”, i.e. entry-level supply chain, dev ops, marketing roles

• Begin to develop strong and predictable internal pipelines into these high-demand areas

3 strategies to help employees achieve lateral career mobility

Lateral internal mobility is a powerful way for employees to chart their own career pathways.

Here are a few strategies to streamline a lateral career shift:

1. Managers can help employees identify their transferable skills and areas of interest

It can be difficult to know for sure which skills will translate across roles. Because of this, we suggest employers think about skills as durable or perishable – instead of soft and hard. For example:

• Durable skills are long-lasting, like business communication, public speaking, etc. perishable

• Perishable skills are usually specialist skills that may need to be updated/refreshed more frequently, like coding or database management

In general, durable skills are more likely to transfer than perishable skills.

Individuals should know what their durable skills are before looking into lateral movement opportunities.

Next, managers should to take the time to personally assess their areas of strength and interest.

Here are some questions to get that conversation started:

• What are tasks that I both excel at and enjoy doing?

• What activities do I find most fulfilling or engaging?

• In which areas have I received positive feedback or recognition from colleagues or management?

Together, knowing what transferable skills a person has and what they most enjoy doing can begin to shed light on potential lateral career moves that may already be accessible.

Together, knowing what transferable skills a person has and what they most enjoy doing can begin to shed light on potential lateral career moves that may already be accessible.

2. Build relationships across departments

Managers should help employees network internally outside of their own department.

This can be achieved through:

• Engaging in company-wide events

• Participating in interdepartmental activities

• Becoming part of an Employee Resource Group (ERG)

Expanding internal networks lets employees:

• Get a sneak peak into different departments

• Provides a chance to gain insight into different roles

• Learn from peers

• And ultimately uncover potential opportunities for a lateral move

3. Participate in cross-functional projects and job rotations

Once employees have expressed interest in a lateral move, they can either:

• Apply to support cross-functional projects (for a specific department)

• Or sign up for a job rotation (to explore a broader variety of roles)

These are both great ways to gain exposure to different areas of the company and build some of the skills that may be required for a lateral move.

Companies will need to create a framework for employees to volunteer or be nominated for rotations or cross-collaborative work.

For employees, with appropriate managerial support, this can include hand-raising to see if a specific department has a need for an internal “gig” worker on a project.

Employer PSA: It’s important to build career mobility programs with DE&I in mind. Many frontline workers often do not have enough:

• Time: They have caregiving responsibilities, two jobs, etc.

• Resources: The ability to take off work, means to pay for ongoing education, etc.

For strategies that promote DE&I for strategies & remove these barriers, check out our guide to inclusive career mobility.

By leaning on these two pillars, companies can focus on building a culture of promotion in their workplaces.

What is hybrid career mobility? Combining vertical and lateral paths

Hybrid career mobility represents a combination of lateral mobility into new role types or departments, along with vertical mobility in the form of promotions.

For today’s workforce, hybrid career mobility is often the most common shape individual career paths will take.

Employer-funded learning can help an employee on their path to hybrid career mobility.

Expert tip: With the proper career mobility framework in place, employers can take measures to invest in the talent development of their frontline employees – who often start their careers with little to no education – to retain and promote them long-term, increasing:

• Employee engagement

• Overall satisfaction

• And DE&I

One of the key elements of engaging talent development programs are stackable credits.

Employers can fund stackable credits, or short-form learning programs that can “stack” together into credit for an employee’s diploma or degree.

Employers can fund stackable credits, or short-form learning programs that can “stack” together into credit for an employee’s diploma or degree.

For example, this can help employees grow from Store Associate roles to Frontline Supervisor roles, and eventually even a Supply Chain Management or Software Engineering role.

4 strategies for fostering hybrid career mobility

Companies committed to creating opportunities for their workforces are clear about the pathways employees can access – vertically, laterally, and beyond.

They also invest in the right education and training programs to foster career mobility. develop relevant skills accessible.

1. Understand individual skills, desires, and interests

Making internal mobility equitable means ensuring every employee has an opportunity to discuss and explore their skills and interests.

Companies can facilitate this process by:

• Manager enablement: Providing managers with structure, policies, and tools to empower their direct reports to engage in self-assessment

• Scheduled conversations: Require regular conversations about their career growth aspirations (monthly or quarterly)

• Discovery and growth opportunities: Provide skills assessments, work-related personality tests, and career development workshops

2. Grow employee awareness of career development and education opportunities

To enable better awareness in an equitable way, companies should establish a culture of opportunity.

What does this mean? It could look like:

• Internal mobility practices become commonplace

• There is open communication about internal job opportunities

• Normalizing managers encouraging direct reports to explore different roles

Pro top: HR departments and people teams can create accessible databases of internal job postings with regular communications about internal opportunities (including “gigs” and apprenticeships) to ensure transparency.

3. Drive growth through consistent mentorship

Access to mentors and coaches should be at the core of an internal mobility strategy.

Internal mentorship programs that connect employees with willing and able mentors can:

• Support better knowledge-sharing

• Promote networking

• And foster professional skill development

For Guild partners: Our enhanced coaching services help your employees:

• Identify personal and professional goals

• Provide consistent support

• Help learners prepare for their next role

4. Embrace continuous learning and skill enhancement

In addition to knowing what internal mobility options they have, employees should also have access to the right skills to become competitive for them.

To ensure employees can build the right skills, this should include:

• Relevant vetted training programs

• Courses

• Certifications

Finally, growth stems from embracing a growth mindset in which continuous learning is recognized as essential to ongoing personal and professional growth.

Growth stems from embracing a growth mindset in which continuous learning is recognized as essential to ongoing personal and professional growth.

To increase employee engagement, companies should offer fully-funded programs and development resources, including:

• Access to online courses

• Workshops

• Related coaching support

All of these resources help employees along their education and career journeys.

What are the challenges in the way of career mobility?

Internal career mobility commonly faces both cultural and structural challenges that can prevent employees and companies from growing.

Both types of challenges can point to broader areas of opportunity to strengthen career mobility programs.

1. Employees hit a mid-career wall – and don’t know where to go.

For large companies, a hierarchical structure becomes more narrow the higher the job level is (e.g. there are fewer vice presidents than there are associates).

Most people leaders are aware of high-level employees making external leaps to pursue upward mobility elsewhere.

Job hopping also happens often at the mid-career level – and it is largely avoidable with the right structure around incentives (e.g. programs that enable employees to upskill) and advancement opportunities.

Job hopping also happens often at the mid-career level – and it is largely avoidable with the right structure around incentives (e.g. programs that enable employees to upskill) and advancement opportunities.

For example, a number of employers use tech upskilling to retain mid-career level talent who might otherwise have “job hopped”.

2. A lack of onramps into roles that offer career mobility leaves frontline talent stagnant

Companies that primarily hire external talent into upwardly mobile roles prevent high-potential internal talent from accessing growth opportunities.

The result? They ultimately lose them to companies willing to make the investment.

Creating onramps from entry level to gateway roles, and from gateway to more advanced roles ensures better equity for an entire workforce.

3. Expecting employees to “own their own development” leaves workers lacking support and resources

The “own your own development” fallacy is the idea that if an employer provides development opportunities, the responsibility is then on employees’ shoulders to turn them into career mobility.

Employees can and should be empowered to explore and express their own career goals.

But (and it’s an important but), career mobility becomes more equitable when it’s accessible to everyone. This requires the right structural supports are in place.

For example, structural supports should include:

• Ability to have meaningful growth conversations with managers

• Develop career readiness skills

• See internal mobility opportunities

• Know which education and skilling programs will best align with those opportunities.

4. Lack of awareness-building efforts

The more proactive employers are in communicating opportunities for career mobility within their organizations, the more likely employees are to be able to take advantage of them.

That may sound obvious, but awareness of internal career mobility opportunities is a big issue.

According to a 2021 Guild survey, close to 4 in 10 employees expressed that a lack of awareness of career mobility opportunities within their company has held back their career advancement.

5. All-or-nothing thinking holds back companies and individuals from scaling career advancement

Career mobility is a process, both for companies and for individuals.

Holding off on pursuing — or creating — opportunities unless success and scalability are guaranteed will hold mobility back in a never-ending loop.

Instead, individuals should take initial steps to explore opportunities and employers should focus on building well-trodden career pathways accessible from the frontline.

6. Misaligned priorities – particularly in “uncertain times” – slow progress

In an uncertain economy, companies and individuals are both less likely to take on major changes.

Distorted perspectives on career mobility can work against companies and employees, as they prevent employers from seeing and acting on the connection between internal mobility and organizational health and longevity.

For employers, it’s important to remember that an agile workforce is empowered to respond to uncertainty.

The same principles of growth and learning that underpin career mobility are the same principles that define how adaptable a workforce is.

What are the best practices for increasing internal career mobility?

As people leaders, it’s important to invest in the right culture and structural supports to help your employees grow and succeed. Here are some of the best practices we’ve implemented with our Fortune 1000 partners.

1. Offer fully-funded learning opportunities

Providing funded learning and education programs will make sure employees aren’t prevented from gaining valuable skills and experience due to financial barriers.

Instead, employers should consider tuition assistance programs (in which the employer covers tuition costs upfront rather than requiring employees to go through a reimbursement process) is a best practice.

2. Offer job rotation, apprenticeship, and cross-functional work opportunities

In addition to education, employers should provide pathways for employees to gain valuable experience and insights into different roles through job rotations or opportunities to flex into cross-functional work.

3. Identify connection points between current talent, priority roles, and pathways into them

First, employers need to understand where there are high concentrations of potential “source” talent.

Spoiler: It’s in their frontline workforce.

Then, employers need to figure out how they can grow that talent into priority roles.

These connections are what form internal career pathways. 
Want to figure out the connection between these? Try our career mobility fundamentals workbook for guided exercises.

4. Raise awareness internally with strategic marketing efforts

Organizations should prioritize multiple touchpoints with employees to raise awareness of opportunities.

For example:

• Emails

• Text messages

• Company intranets

• Flyers in high-traffic areas such as breakrooms

• Through regular one-on-one conversations with managers

It’s also important to share internal mobility success stories of employees who are able to pursue new roles within the company. This has been proven to encourage and inspire individuals to pursue the opportunities before them.

5. Think strategically about what measurable success looks like

Although outputs and indicators such as adoption rates and program completion rates are significant, they are not the same as outcomes.

Metrics that matter the most for skilling are outcomes, think:

• Promotions

• Job replacements

• Internal job movement rate

They should therefore be prioritized in measuring and judging the success of career mobility program performance.

6. Focus on building a culture of opportunity

Enacting smart policies and intentionally creating opportunity for career mobility won’t achieve much if mobility isn’t a lived value within the organization.

Instead, employers should focus on building a culture of opportunity to help mobility policies and procedures come to life for employees, like:

• Encouraging and facilitating continuous learning: Continuous learning means recognizing that the only truly durable skill is the ability to learn.

• Provide regular feedback and recognition: Once or twice a year conversations about growth are lip service, not a lived value. Provide regular feedback to employees about ways they can grow within their roles and toward their career aspirations.

• Solicit employee feedback: Hearing from employees who are taking advantage of funded learning or internal job rotations is essential – but so is hearing from employees who are not taking advantage of these opportunities to make real-time adjustments.

For companies, the benefit of facilitating vertical, lateral, and hybrid career mobility options for all goes far beyond filling in skills gaps and building better pipelines into open roles.

Making a variety of types of career mobility possible is an engine to nurture talent, foster growth, and build a culture that values continuous development.